Blow
Dani Marti has crafted new works for his upcoming exhibition ‘Blow’ that focus in on the communion between the artist and his materials; a relationship that is bound within his unconventional ‘canvases’.
Weaving, bending and sewing his materials together by hand, Marti invests each ‘painting’ with a rhythm that suggests the performative process of making. Untethering his work from the stories of his heroes and neighbours, Marti now explores the psychology of surface through acrylic, polyester and aluminium.
These new works take on the guise of abstract paintings, with each raw part acting as a fleck of paint. However, instead of resolving into a portrait, landscape, or other appearance, Marti’s materials have a sensual certainty in themselves.
Even though each work strives for the liberating feeling of objectivity, they are inevitably taut with the desires and body of the artist. As these quasi-sculptural forms double and invert on themselves, individual traces of the artist are both bound within the work and unraveled in the process of viewing. Ultimately, Marti’s works elude a concrete reading, favouring the infinite psychologies of colour, surface and texture.
Marti splits his time between Barcelona and Sydney, working across sculpture, installation, public art and video. He has exhibited extensively both in Australia and overseas, including in The public body .02 at Artspace, Sydney (2017),Black Sun, Frematle Arts Centre, for Perth International Art Festival, Perth; Immerse at Sandneskulturhus, Norway(2016), Video Stage, Art Stage Singapore (2015), and Obey! at Centro Cultural Matucana
Dani Marti was born 1963 Barcelona, Spain and lives and works in Sydney, Australia. Marti works across video, installation and public art, each work constituting an intimate portrait. Marti’s unorthodox woven and filmic works speak to notions of portraiture and sexuality in Modernism, Minimalism and geometric abstraction. Since 1998, Marti has held over 40 solo exhibitions. Recent exhibitions include his solo BLACK SUN, commissioned for Perth International Art Festival (2016); Immerse, Sandneskulturhus, Sandnes, Norway (2016); La Vida es Esto, Domus Atrium, Salamanca (2015); Dark Heart, the Adelaide Biennial (2014), ECONOMY, CCA Glasgow; Stills, Edinburgh (2013); Videonale-14, Kunstmuseum Bonn (2013); Let the Healing Begin, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane (2011); TOUCH: The portraiture of Dani Marti, a major solo retrospective at Newcastle Regional Art Gallery (2011) ;
Social Documents: The Ethics of Encounter, Stills Gallery, Edinburgh (2010); Vocal Thoughts, Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia (2010) and Cinema X: I like to Watch, Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto (2010). Dani Marti’s work is held in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow; The University of Queensland Art Museum, Brisbane; Art Bank, Sydney; Chartwell Collection, Auckland; City Art Gallery, Auckland and the University of Wollongong, NSW. Marti has completed significant public works including one at Westfield Centrepoint 100 Market St, with John Wardle Architects. The first major monograph of Marti’s work was published in 2012 by Hatje Cantz.